One of the largest healthcare builds in the country just got its team. A joint venture of Turner Construction and Consigli Construction will build the Kenneth C. Griffin Pavilion, a roughly $2.3 billion cancer-care tower at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s main Manhattan campus, the contractors said in a late-May announcement. Demolition and excavation are already underway.
Inside the Kenneth C. Griffin Pavilion
CannonDesign put the facility at 883,000 square feet. Inside: 12 operating suites and 208 single-occupancy inpatient beds, a configuration that reflects where high-acuity oncology has been heading, toward private rooms and surgical capacity rather than shared wards. An enclosed two-story patient bridge will span 67th Street to connect the new pavilion to the existing hospital, letting patients move between buildings without going outside.
MSK tied the investment to demographics. Rising cancer case projections from the CDC, better treatment technology and longer lifespans all point the same direction, the hospital said: more demand for specialized space than its current footprint can hold.
A high-rise hospital built around an operating hospital
The hard part isn’t the height. It’s that MSK has to keep treating patients while an 883,000-square-foot tower rises next door. “We are committed to delivering this project safely and efficiently while ensuring the hospital remains fully operational throughout construction,” said Jason Tavarez, a Turner project executive. The sequence reflects that constraint: steel erection starts mid-2027, with a targeted completion of mid-2030.
For New York-based Turner, the country’s top commercial contractor by revenue, and Milford, Massachusetts-based Consigli, the award lands amid a wider run of cancer-facility work. “This new facility will equip providers with the resources necessary to meet growing healthcare needs,” said Consigli project executive Thomas Drumm, describing care that helps patients “navigate their cancer journeys with dignity and compassion.” DPR broke ground on a Sutter Health cancer complex in Modesto, California earlier this year, and Gilbane started a radiopharmaceutical lab in Philadelphia in May.
Healthcare has been a steadier bet than most nonresidential sectors, and institutional demand is one of the few bright spots showing up in architecture billings data. A $2.3 billion oncology tower in the most expensive construction market in the U.S. is about as strong a signal as the segment sends. For a look at how a comparable institutional cancer build comes together, see Exchange’s listing for the Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre.
Source: Construction Dive and Turner Construction.